


Sisyphus or The Mummy

by navree



Series: Gods and Monsters [1]
Category: The Mummy (2017), Universal Monsters Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Universe, Implied Sexual Content, Literary References & Allusions, Monster Movies, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-12-27 19:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navree/pseuds/navree
Summary: The colors were vibrant, the smells rich, the touch soft, and it was all too real to be just a dream.There are no songs sung of those who cheat death.





	1. Full Sky

**Author's Note:**

> this is heavily au, based off the premise that we stop making 50+ men who aren't Liam Neeson the star of every action movie, and let women do the heavy lifting. this is basically part of a series that's gonna be devoted to retelling the Universal Monster stories the way they're meant to be told, starting with a fix-it version of 2017's The Mummy.  
> as always, comments (either positive or constructive) are always welcome and much appreciated!

The sarcophagus was sucking the air out of the plane. Jenny Halsey could feel it, feel the way her breath shortened every time she glanced down at it. She wanted to believe that it was just nerves. The sarcophagus was a frightening discovery, all black with painful eyes and a screaming mouth, spiked and written with warnings to keep out, to leave. But it was something more. Something deep, something primal. And yet something had compelled her to get on this plane rather than the other one, even when Nick Morton attempted to throw a cocky smile her way and assure he was more than capable of guarding her "box". But it wasn't just a box, was it? A simple box wouldn't have been hidden the way it was, wouldn't have been struck from the records the way it had been.

Running her hands over the hieroglyphs, Jenny swallowed against a dry throat, working her brain to understand the picture story, to weave it into words. She was the only one awake on the plane; Nick and the others were all in various stages of sleep, Nick's fitful as he sweated and tossed about. Taking out her ever present tape recorder, Jenny made sure to keep her voice low as she began to interpret the hieroglyphs aloud. 

"The hieroglyphs say her name was... Ahmanet," Jenny began, feeling her heartbeat speed up again. "It appears that the wife of a pharaoh died in childbirth, leaving a sole heir to the throne: a girl. A girl called _Ahmanet_." And suddenly, Jenny saw her. She saw a beautiful woman among the sands of the desert, with long dark hair and soulful eyes, and a come hither look that made Jenny shiver. "She was sworn to be Egypt's next queen. But her thirst for power..." She stopped, feeling as if something was attempting to force the words back down her throat. Jenny cleared her throat, shook her head, and kept on reading, keeping her gaze away from the screaming face of the sarcophagus. "Her thirst for power led her down a darker path, one that had to be stopped." 

The images overwhelmed her mind. The same woman, that same beautiful woman, but fighting with a man. Kneeling before a different man. Slicing blood into a bowl of milk. Crows flapping their wings. A knife, with a red jewel gleaming at the hilt. The woman again, holding it, raising it high above her tangle of dark hair. 

And then she was back in her seat, disoriented, unable to remember how she'd gotten there, just in time to see Nick stab Colonel Greenway. It was a sharp and sudden move, and Jenny was being yanked out of her seat, hands rough on her bicep as she's dragged behind the body of another soldier. The shouting of men reverberated through the plane, guns held high, and there was a terrible, blank look on Nick's face that made Jenny's heart go cold. 

"Stop! Stop, this is a pressurized aircraft!" They all went silent, even as Nick continued to advance. His movements were slow, monotone, as if he was already a dead man. "Nick." He didn't react, and Jenny maneuvered herself to the front of the crowd of soldiers, her ears deaf to their protests. "Nick!" He stopped, inches away from her, bloody knife still in his hands. His eyes were blank and cold, his skinned was gray and looked as though it was rotting. He looked like a corpse, and when he stopped Jenny could hear the sound of his labored breathing. 

No one moved. No one breathed. Even when Nick raised the knife, so that it was only a foot away from her throat, Jenny didn't move. Her pulse jumped in her throat, heart pounded wildly, but she didn't take a step back, didn't raise a hand to defend herself. "Nick." He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but the sound that emerged was something else than human. Something rasping and coarse and rough, something ancient.

" _My chosen._ "  

It wasn't in English, what he said, wasn't in any language she'd heard during her time working at the British Museum, during her time being alive. And yet Jenny understood it perfectly. It didn't make any sense to her, what he said, but she understood it. It rang in her mind, and she felt her lips part as if to repeat it back to him. But then his knife swung forward. Without thinking, Jenny grabbed his wrist, bracing her arm against his, just barely managing to block the blade from slicing into her jugular. As if on autopilot, she twisted Nick's wrist, forcing his hand back and jabbing his own knife into his forehead, into his brain. He dropped like a stone, truly dead. Just as a precaution, Jenny kicked his body away before stumbling backwards, nearly collapsing before one of the Americans grabbed her arms and guided her back to her seat.

"He didn't resist," she whispered, practically to herself. "When I fought him...he didn't even try to fight me back." No one said anything. No one could. Jenny put her head in her hands, fingers tangled in the blond strands, forcing herself not to look at the body. His last words still rang in her ears, warped and distorted with every passing second. _My chosen._ _My chosen. My chosen my chosen my chosen my chosen_. And then it wasn't Nick saying them, but someone else, a woman with a velvet voice purring in her ear with such realistic warmth that Jenny flinched, her gaze going to the coffin strapped at the center of the plane. She stood, suddenly, determined to march over to that sarcophagus and figure out why it was intriguing her so. 

She would have done just that, before the left engine exploded. Jenny's legs buckled, banging her knees against the metal floor of the plane. She glanced out the window just in time to see the sky turn black. Not black from clouds, but black full of birds, blotting out any other color the sky might have. The sky was full of birds, diving for the plane, pelting the windows and the wings and everything else, like a hail of gunfire. The aircraft spiraled and began to plummet downwards, sending Jenny and all its other occupants crashing upwards, and then downwards again. Everything was spinning, going too fast, and she just barely had time to grab a parachute before the second engine burst into flames, bringing a sharp and acrid scent of smoke to the whole nightmare. 

Jenny had only just strapped the parachute to her back when the wing of the plane tore off, sucking her and everyone else into the air. Screams choked in her throat as she sailed into the air, somehow finding the mental fortitude to pull the cord and save herself, even as everyone else shot downwards to the sand. _Sand_ , Jenny thought dully. _We're in Egypt._

The plane had been headed for England. 

 _My chosen my chosen my chosen my chosen **I'm coming** my chosen my chosen my chosen_. The foreign words were the last ones in Jenny's mind before everything turned black, and she drifted down towards the dunes, towards Egypt and its secrets, towards the sarcophagus amongst the wreckage. 


	2. Death in a Cradle

_hours earlier_

 

* * *

 

There was a giant, gaping hole where a building had once stood. Smoke and sand curled in the air, giving the scene an almost otherworldly cast. The air smelled of dry heat, a smell Jenny Halsey was unaccustomed to from her time in London. There was still the occasional hiss of falling rock and dust, but otherwise the edge of the cavern was silent. Jenny stared down at it, at the yawning hole and the screaming statue and the seemingly unending darkness. There were arguments behind her, the muted voices of Nick Morton and Chris Vail and Colonel Greenway sounding watery and far away. No doubt they were quarreling about the airstrike that had unearthed this hole, about who was responsible and whether or not there was any reason for it in the first place. 

"Something wrong?" Jenny shook herself out of her daze, tightening her scarf around her neck. Gabrielle Utterson's arms were crossed over her chest, dark head cocked towards the hole. "You've been staring at that thing for minutes now. Am I missing something?"

"Sometimes I forget we don't technically work in the same field," Jenny responded, nodding down to the hole. The screaming statue didn't have true eyes, but Jenny couldn't help but feel as if they were staring at her, into her. "This tomb...it's not Mesopotamian. I think-I think it's Egyptian."

"And that's a big thing?" Jenny turned back to where Vail was advancing towards them, a frown marking a crease between his eyebrows. 

"We're in the Persian Gulf," was the only explanation Gabrielle gave, gesturing to the dusty world around them. Raven haired where Jenny was fair, with a slight twist to her accent, taller and sharper than her companion and with a harder gaze, Gabrielle's standing as a respected lawyer made her invaluable to the various quests made by museums to seek antiquities around the world. Jenny liked having her around. 

"Right," Vail muttered. "Egypt's thousands of miles away, and this is Egyptian. That's weird." Gabrielle made a noncommittal hum, a noise that Jenny registered in the back of her head. She was back to staring at the statue, trying to decipher the meaning behind its gaping mouth. 

"Greenway!" With sudden precision Jenny turned, leaving her two companions for the colonel and the still disgruntled Nick Morton. "I'm going to need your men to set up a perimeter around this site while my team and I work it." 

"Hold on hold on hold on," Greenway snapped, his hands up as though in angry surrender. "We aren't even supposed to be here!"

"Colonel!" This time, Jenny's voice was sharper, colder. "This is an extraordinary find, a unique one. The contents of Tutankhamen's tomb alone were worth thousands upon thousands of pounds Sterling. We'll _never_ get an opportunity like this." Greenway hesitated still, his subordinates looking nervously excited the moment she mentioned the wealth. Gabrielle was on a satellite phone, a furtive hunch in her shoulders as she moved away from the group to have her conversation. Jenny planted her hands on her hips, stance firm. "My job here is to help find and preserve antiquities, to keep them out of enemy hands. I don't think you'd want this kind of value at the insurgent's fingertips, would you?"

The look on his face made it clear he wouldn't. 

 

 

 

In the end, it was decided that Chris Vail and Nick Morton would accompany Jenny down into the hole, while Gabrielle stayed topside and worked out logistics between the Americans and the British Museum. 

"So..." Vail was choosing the worst time to begin casual conversation, right as they were dangling on ropes, being lowered into a seemingly bottomless pit. "What's the deal, with you and..." He gestured up to where Gabrielle was watching their progress, and the swing of his rope made Jenny's heart clench. 

"I work at the British Museum," she explained, keeping her focus on her own descent. "I specialize in antiquities, specifically from the Egyptian New Kingdom. Gabbie's mainly a lawyer for the museum. She's mostly here to make sure we don't run into any legal messes while we're excavating and such." Vail nodded, seemingly assuaged. 

"And what did you mean, when you told Greenway about this being unique?" Jenny didn't look at him this time either, instead staring down into the creeping darkness, her flashlight a fuzzy beam attempting to cut through the thick of the black. 

"We're miles away from Egypt, in the cradle of civilization." A stone dropped, making her flinch. "But we might have an Egyptian buried here, far away from his or her home. Away from a life after death." She looked at Vail then, noticed the way their flashlights made him look corpse pale against the darkness. "That means something, I think. Something I haven't seen before." Vail didn't ask any questions after that, and they continued to lower themselves down in silence. 

 

 

 

It felt claustrophobic. Despite that they had just descended from a giant hole in the sky, Jenny felt as if she was being swallowed up and trapped by the rocks. Unhooking herself, she forced those feelings to the wayside, letting the beam of her flashlight illuminate the dripping stalactites, the faces of the two men. 

"Creepy," was Nick's only observation, and Jenny took the time away from her observations to fix him with an exasperated stare. Vail, meanwhile, seemed almost in awe of everything, his eyes roving over the crumbling ruins inside the cave. Jenny followed suit, trying to spot any hieroglyphics or any sign to indicate what this place was, who was buried here. There was nothing. The walls were bare. Jenny knew enough from her studies to feel how _wrong_ this was, how completely unprecedented. 

"Hey guys!" The other two turned towards Vail's voice, to where his outstretched hands were gathering the dripping substance from the rocks. "I think...is this mercury?" Jenny peered forward, resisting the urge to touch the liquid quicksilver in Vail's palm. 

"The ancient Egyptians believed it weakened evil spirits." Vail released the droplets, and the trio watched them bounce and slither on the floor. 

"Well, we know better," Nick said, tone deliberately blasé. "That stuff'll kill you." 

"Uh huh." She wasn't listening, not really, instead following the process of the mercury intently with her flashlight. Ignoring the sounds of confusion from the men, she watched as it slid into a canal, and followed the canal for the length of the room. Her footsteps echoed in the silence, like the steady beating of a heart. Her focus so intent, Jenny hadn't even noticed when she'd left the current room for another, and when she did her heart jumped. "Guys! Get the lights!" Nick and Vail complied, and soon the room was blazing, lighting a scene Jenny couldn't make sense of. 

"What the Hell?" Nick's remark was aptly put, but Jenny couldn't find a response. Everything about this scene felt _off_ , as if the world had suddenly shifted on its axis. There were no provisions for the afterlife, no canonic jars or shabti servants, no outward facing guardians to ward off evil and protect their dead master. Instead, they were turned inwards, faces menacing and snarling, as if warning whoever was buried here to stay put. And, most horrifying of all, were the chains. Chains wrapped around a pool of mercury, chains dipped inside, chains lining the rock walls. 

"These are for raising the coffin thing, right?" Vail seemed almost proud of his knowledge, until Jenny turned back to face him. She felt cold suddenly, and terribly frightened. 

"Not this time," she whispered, shining her light on the mercury pool. "They're for keeping something down." Part of her wanted to flee, but something kept her rooted to the spot. "This isn't a tomb. It's a prison." 

"OK!" Vail clapped his gloved hands, making Jenny flinch. "So let's go." 

"No." She was surprised at herself for objecting, but something stronger than her fear was washing over Jenny. A curiosity bordering on need, as if something was compelling her to stay. _Demanding_ that she stay, even. And Jenny didn't want to resist this instinct, wanted to find out exactly what was in that pool, find out what was requiring this much imprisonment. 

"Hold on, no? What do you mean no?" Vail stepped in front of her, as if he was going to physically prevent her from going down any further to investigate. "You just said this place was a creepy prison of some kind, so we should just leave!" 

"Absolutely not," Jenny retorted. "This could be the historic find of the century, and there's no way we're just going to leave it here for anyone to stumble on and destroy." She turned away from Vail abruptly, trying to calculate how best to descend without falling and injuring herself. 

"Well, that is just too bad, because _I_ ," and here he emphatically pointed to himself, as if she was unaware of exactly who he was, "am leaving!"

"Hold on Vail." Nick raised a placating hand toward his friend, who appeared to be increasingly more agitated at the prospect of staying in the cavern longer than strictly necessary.

"Hold on _what_ Nick? I don't do ancient prison caves, it's not my thing." They were wasting time. Whatever Jenny felt about this prison, whatever mixture of longing and nerves, she knew that this might well be her only chance to figure out what was hiding in the mercury. If they left before figuring it out, she worried that she would never know. 

"Give me your gun." If they hadn't thought she was insane, they would think it now. And yet, despite Vail's protestations, Nick handed over his firearm. Pointing it at the chains, Jenny squeezed the trigger, stumbling slightly from the recoil as the shot blasted out. Vail shouted, throwing his arms over his head, and Nick too jumped back. Jenny stayed rooted to the spot, watching as the chains began to move, shifting and pulling until a sarcophagus emerged from the mercury. 

It was different from anything Jenny had ever seen. It was made of ancient, blackened stone, with no jewels or ornamentation to distinguish the level of prestige whoever was buried in it had experienced in their life. The coffin had more changes wrapped around it, drawn tight, as determined to make sure whatever was in there would never find its way out. And the face...she had seen sarcophagi before, and each one had a similar expression on its gold face. Expressions of serenity, of calm acceptance, of patience needed to find their way from this world to the next. But this face was different. The eyes were empty pits, and the mouth screamed a silent scream, as if in some terrible agony. 

And then the cave vanished. The sarcophagus, Nick and Vail, the mercury, the amenities of the twenty first century, they were all gone. It was replaced with sand, endless and scorching sand, and a woman. A beautiful woman, with long dark hair and sloe eyes lined with kohl, with finger tips dipped in turquoise and the smell of heat and perfume mingling on her skin. Her hands caressed along Jenny's skin, soft and feather light. She shuddered. 

" _You have set me free._ " Her voice was soft, melodic, borderline intoxicating. Her lips were millimeters away from Jenny's, close enough for her to feel the barest brush of their touch. " _My chosen._ " She had questions, questions swimming through her brain even as the other women drew even closer. She wanted to know who this woman was, why she had been imprisoned the way she had, and why she had picked Jenny to free her. Why she had made Jenny want to free her. Her lips parted, either to speak or to receive a kiss, she wasn't sure...

"Jenny? Jenny!" Vail's raised voice brought her back to the present. "You there?" She nodded mutely, rubbing her temples with her hands, tangling her fingers in the blond strands of her hair. Her real hair, her real skin, the real air she was breathing. Not whatever vision had briefly possessed her, not a mysterious woman with her deadly beauty. 

"Vail?" 

"Yeah?" Jenny lifted her chin, stance firm, shifting her gaze from the screaming coffin and all its potential secrets for Vail, hoping the expression on her face made it clear she wasn't going to tolerate any arguments on the subject. 

"Tell Colonel Greenway that I am not leaving this cavern without that coffin. And if he refuses, he'll have to explain to his government and my colleagues why he's leaving me behind with it." 


	3. Recovery

Princess Ahmanet. Beautiful, ruthless, cunning. Sole heir to the throne of Egypt. Future ruler of all the kingdoms, soon to be a living God. Commander of the sands, of the winds, of the sky, the winding and stretching empire. And then

 _it was ripped away from me!_  

Pharaoh had a son. A new child, a babe, would take her throne. All that Ahmanet had been promised was stripped away. And Ahmanet knew that power was not given, it had to be taken. So she made a choice. She made a deal

_with a God!_

with Set, the god of Death. The God of Evil. They made a pact, an unholy alliance, to give Ahmanet what she sought. He gave her a Dagger, a mystical weapon, a symbol of their deal with one another. And as Set gave her the power she craved, Ahmanet was made

_was reborn!_

a monster. She was changed, transformed, into a thing of evil. And that thing of evil, with no conscience, no mercy, slaughtered her family as they slept. Her royal father, and the infant who had 

_stolen!_

succeeded her place. But the pact was not yet complete. Ahmanet had sworn to bring the demon into our world, with the Dagger, in the body of a mortal man, who would

_become a living God himself!_

become the vessel for the ultimate evil. But she was stopped, her chosen slain, the Dagger broken, before the ritual could be complete. As punishment for her sins, Ahmanet was banished, and mummified alive. 

_but Death is a doorway, and nothing can remain buried forever!_

 

 

 

Jenny awoke to a mouthful of sand. She spat out, scrambling to a seated position, her eyes still swimming with the visions she'd seen in the darkness. The woman's voice, Ahmanet's voice, still rang in her head, whispering to her the secrets of her life and death. Eventually, Jenny brought herself back to the present, to the scorching sun and the sand coating her body. Still tangled in the parachute, she struggled to stand, or find something to free herself with. Finally unbuckling herself, she stood on shaking legs, taking in her surroundings. She could see something that might have been the wreckage of the plane, something in the distance, far away from where she had drifted. And there might have been a city somewhere else, equally as distant, or maybe dark blurs that were people coming to rescue her. Or perhaps they were all nothing more than mirages, and she was in the middle of the desert, destined to die.

Jenny sat down, hard, feeling her breath shorten in the gasps. She couldn't die here, not here, not now, not in the middle of nowhere with no one to help her. She didn't _want_ to. _And you won't_. A strangled yell left Jenny's throat, and pressed her fingers to her temples, as if trying to force Ahmanet's voice from her mind.

"Get out of my head!" Nothing happened. No one responded. Of course not. No one responded because she was in the desert, on her own. "I'm going mad." She was making herself hysterical, she could tell, and fought to take long, even breaths through her nose, to calm her heart rate and make sure she didn't excite herself. Jenny Halsey was not going to simply lie down and die. If she was, it would be only after she had exhausted all her options, and not because she was going to cry herself out amidst a depleted parachute.

" _Jenny!_ " She sighed, forcing herself to stand even as her head pounded. Ahmanet's voice sounded different, further away, as if calling from a distance instead of ringing in her head. Jenny preferred it to before, but she would have preferred it even more if there had been more voice. " _Jenny!_ " Something was off. The voice was closer now than it was before, but it didn't necessarily sound like the voice she'd heard while unconscious, or in the plane, or in the tomb. It was coarser, lower pitched, slightly strident. On a whim, Jenny turned in the direction she thought it was coming from. 

The dark blurs from before had not, in fact, been her imagination running wild. The dark blurs were two people, two very real people on horses, one of them waving  waving a hand dramatically in the air. She responded by waving both, only just stopping from jumping up and down in an attempt to make sure they got her attention. It seemed like they did. 

Jenny almost fell to her knees when the horses stopped, and almost did when Gabrielle launched herself forward to fling her arms around Jenny, nearly knocking her over. She didn't say anything, didn't do anything except hug the lawyer back, thanking whatever God or Gods existed that allowed her not to die of dehydration or starvation or illness or whatever else.

"What the hell happened?" Jenny disentangled herself from Gabrielle, squinting through the light to where Vail was standing by the horses. "We were following you guys on the other plane and then suddenly..." He smacked one hand with a fist, as if to demonstrate the plane's descent towards the Earth. "And I thought we were supposed to be heading back to England with your mummy?" 

"We were supposed to," she confirmed. "I guess we got...turned around, or some such." Vail didn't seem to be at all bothered by that, simply nodding as if it was a common thing. Gabrielle, on the other hand, looked duly confused, and almost worried. "Vail...Nick is dead." Jenny wished that there had been a better way to say that, a kinder way, but her mind was still wrapping itself around the fact that the plane had crashed. Not just the fact that it had, but the circumstances surrounding it. But she wouldn't tell Vail about his friend's final moments, not until she had an inkling of what had happened. 

"Shit," was Vail's only response, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Jenny wanted to say something more to comfort him, but held her tongue. 

"We should go," Gabrielle said suddenly. "We need to get you to a doctor Jenny, you've just been in a plane crash."

"Wait-" 

"Jenny." Gabrielle's voice brooked no argument. "I'm not asking." She knew it, but that wasn't what Jenny had been about to say. Having taken the time to examine herself, she had realized there wasn't any injury on her person whatsoever, no scratch or bruise or cut or burn. And she didn't know why. 

 

 

 

The fourth body dropped. Nowhere close to being the great beauty she was, she could at least stand, could realize she had at least a trace of an appearance beginning to gather. The air smelled of heat, of home. She inhaled with a rasping breath, and with her exhale tried a name on her tongue. _Jenny_.


	4. A Need

She heard her name, in the back of her mind. It didn't happen at regular intervals, but sometimes in a cluster, other times heavily spaced out. But she kept on hearing _Jenny_ in her head. She was more lucid now than after the crash, and didn't believe that the spirit of Ahmanet was somehow communicating with her beyond the grave, but she also wasn't sure that the voice was her own. 

"I don't get it." This wasn't the first time Vail had made his confusion known, and ordinarily Jenny would have been annoyed by his constant probing. But she _didn't get_ anything about what had happened either. "So Nick goes nuts and stabs Colonel Greenway, then the plane crashes, and you get a parachute and manage to save yourself, and then after crash landing in the desert when we were supposed to be going to England, there's not a scratch on you anywhere?" Jenny nodded, tracing a finger on the rim of her glass. 

In lieu of a hospital or any form of doctor's office, she had instead insisted on being taken somewhere she could get food. Gabrielle had only agreed after Jenny had proved that there were no injuries on her person, no bruises where the harness of the parachute should have given them. So they were now at a little tavern, or something akin to a tavern, and Jenny was the only one who hadn't ordered anything alcoholic. She didn't want anything other than water, feeling as if she was constantly scraping some of the desert sand out of her mouth, constantly trying to escape the dry heat of it. She wasn't the only one who hadn't consumed any alcohol; Gabrielle hadn't ordered whatever it was she had ordered. Vail had, twice now, no doubt in an attempt to make any of this sound better in his mind. 

"This is wild." Jenny scoffed, downing the last of her water. 

"That's one way of looking at it, I suppose," she muttered, leaning an elbow on the table. "Maybe I just got lucky." 

"If you're that lucky," here Vail thumped his hand on the table, making his two companions jump slightly, "Then come back to the U.S. with me at some point and buy some Powerball tickets." Jenny laughed. She laughed because she needed to laugh, not only out of a craving for levity, but because she needed some outlet for the latent hysteria that had remained from the desert, and laughing was as good an excuse as any. It felt good, and it also felt good to watch Vail smile, after having blurted out the news of his friend's demise. 

Gabrielle didn't. She simply stood with an abrupt "excuse me" low in her throat, and made her way to a payphone, her drink untouched and her shoulders tense. Jenny watched her go, before turning back to Vail, a question burning on her tongue now that they were alone. 

"Vail?" He looked up at her, innocently curious. "Was Nick...Was he ever prone to...fugue states or anything of the like?" 

"Fugue states like when you kind of turn into a drooling zombie kind of fugue states?" Jenny nodded, choosing not to take this moment to describe what fugue states actually were. "No, actually. He wasn't. Why do you ask?" Jenny played with her fingers, rolling her lips between her teeth. 

"When he attacked Greenway, and after," she struggled to find the right words, "It was like he was a zombie, for lack of a better word. He wasn't talking, probably wasn't feeling either. He was just...there." Vail's brow furrowed, fingers tapping an erratic rhythm on the table. There was something going on in his mind; Jenny could almost see the gears turning. She leaned forward intently, her voice almost a whisper now. "Vail, you're thinking of something, I know it. Tell me." He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again, still looking deep in complicated thought.

"You know, we were backpacking in the Alps, I think, a few years back, on a vacation." It was Jenny's turn to feel skeptical by the sudden turn of conversation. "We might have come across someone like that. This almost dead looking guy, and he just kind of stared at us without doing anything before taking off running. I don't know, was Nick doing something like that?" Jenny shook her head, not in denial but in equal confusion.

"I don't know," she murmured. "There's something strange going on. I've felt it ever since we found that tomb." Vail didn't say anything, he simply looked at her. He didn't look like he was doubting her, or planning to have her institutionalized once they returned home. He just simply looked. "I was reading the sarcophagus of the mummy we found. From the way it sounds, this mummy might have been cursed." A brief feeling of cold washed over her, making her shiver. "And I think...I think by freeing her we might have angered the gods." 

"But _we_ didn't free her." From the sound of his voice, it didn't sound as if Vail was trying to be mean. It sounded as if he was simply thinking out loud. " _You_ did."

Images flooded her brain. She wasn't in her seat anymore, she was back in the desert. And she was watching the mummy feed. It was the only possible word for it, to describe the way she pounced on some poor, unsuspecting man, and essentially sucked the life out of him. He shriveled and rotted, and Ahmanet...Ahmanet looked like a human again. Not fully human, with some portions of her body still missing, and with her skin a horrible gray color, but she wasn't just bones and skin. And when she turned, she still looked beautiful. Ahmanet straightened, and took a step forward, and Jenny tried to convince herself she was dreaming, hallucinating. But Ahmanet reached out, and brushed her fingers across her cheek, and suddenly she was hypersensitive to everything. The colors were vibrant, the smells rich, the touch soft, and it was all too real to be just a dream. And Jenny wasn't sure her feelings about that were entirely negative. 

She stood abruptly, back in the present as her chair crashed to the floor. Vail gave her stunned look, entirely shocked. 

"Sorry," was all she mumbled, before bolting for the door. Resisting the urge to slam it shut, Jenny was almost grateful for the sudden rush of heat as she stepped outside. Leaning her head against the wall, she tried to focus on the sights and smells of the area around her, keep her grounded against whatever fever dream she had just had. Even if it had felt too real to be a dream. Hearing a hushed voice near the corner, Jenny nearly turned it, before recognizing who was talking and making the split second decision to keep herself hidden. 

"Yes, but it doesn't make any sense." Whoever Gabrielle was talking to on the phone was clearly agitating her. "She kept on talking about visions, and she survived a plane crash, thousands of miles off of where we should have been I might add, without any scratches or marks on her whatsoever. I don't know what to make of it." There was a sinking feeling in Jenny's stomach as she realized who exactly Gabrielle was referring to. Her. "That's why I called _you_ , Henry! Something's going on here, and the only thing I'm unsure of is what exactly it is. And it's beginning to scare me." The pit in Jenny's stomach only deepened. "No, Henry, wait- _Bloody hell!_ " From the sound of it, Henry had hung up on her. Gabrielle made a growling noise in the back of her throat, a sign of clear frustration. Jenny waited a few seconds before rounding the corner, making sure to keep her foreknowledge of Gabrielle's presence there hidden. 

"Hey." The geniality in her voice was forced. "Everything all right?" Gabrielle looked at her, fiddling with her phone in her hands. 

"Yeah, I was just having a chat with my boss-our boss, technically," she amended, giving a casual shrug of the shoulders. "Just wanted to know what the museum wants us to do." 

"I want to see the crash site." Gabrielle's eyes widened considerably. "I want to see the plane, and the mummy." 

"Jenny, there's absolutely no way." Jenny's eyes narrowed at the lawyer's tone; it was the same tone she used when talking to someone younger or more stupid. "The whole thing sunk beneath the sand, it's gone." 

"Well, there's got to be some way we can see it-"

"Jenny!" Gabrielle's tone was now sharp, something Jenny didn't take to kindly. "Egyptians don't necessarily like Britain right now, or ever. There's no way they'd approve any of this, especially if it's off some random whim."

"This is _not_ ," and here Jenny took a step forward, raising her chin, "some random whim. Now Gabbie, I know you can get us around the legal red tape of all this. That's your job. But the fact remains, I am going to see that wreckage. I _need_ to see it. And I'd like to do it with you and Vail by my side, but if I need to, I will hike into the desert on my own and see what I need to see. And nothing you or Vail or anyone can do is going to stop me from doing just that." Neither woman said anything, just simply stared at each other, dark brown eyes meeting blue. "You can call the boss, if you want. Get official permission." A peculiar expression came over Gabrielle's face, as if she'd just won the argument without even trying. 

"Fine." She dialed, pressed the speaker button, and held the phone up to both of them. 

"Hello?" The voice on the end of the other line was male, refined, intelligent. 

"Henry, it's Gabrielle Utterson." So this was the Henry she had been talking to earlier, the one who had hung up on her. "I've got Jennifer Halsey with me." 

"Ah, Jennifer!" Henry sounded pleasantly surprised. "I was very relieved to hear about your miraculous survival, and even more miraculous recovery." 

"We've got something to ask," Gabrielle cut in, before Jenny could say anything. "Jenny wants to see the wreck, see what we can glean from it, or even salvage. Now, I'm more than able to get us around and out of any legal technicalities and such we might run into. But we both thought it would be prudent to get official permission from you, just in case things go awry." There was a brief pause, and as Gabrielle continued to look smugly neutral, Jenny waited with baited breath. 

"Absolutely." Gabrielle's expression shifted, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed in confusion. "An excellent idea Jennifer. You have my full support, and will continue to should anything go wrong with the Egyptian authorities. Call me at once if you need anything at all." He hung upon before Gabrielle could even open her mouth, and her face changed again to something akin to resignation. 

"You heard him." She sounded just the tiniest bit defeated, and definitely begrudging. She began walking off, shoving the phone back in her pocket. "Let's go have a look at your plane crash." 

"And my mummy." Jenny wasn't entirely sure why she needed to make the distinction. But Ahmanet's nearly formed face came to her mind, the soft touch of her fingers, her voice and the words she murmured in her mind. Gabrielle stopped, and turned, an unfathomable expression in her eyes. Then she continued to walk, going back inside without a backward glance. 

 _Jenny_. Shivering despite the sun, she followed, ignoring the voice in the back of her mind. It couldn't mean anything, not really. It was just a voice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus points to whoever can point out any potential new characters I might have indirectly introduced in this chapter! Hint: there's at least one


	5. Out and About

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay, but I was dealing with some things relating to school, so there was a bit of a delay as I was sorting all of that out. Depending on how it goes, things might be a bit slow, but fear not! There are outlines for the next two chapters ready for me to begin writing!

Vail agreed, shockingly enough. He downed the last of his drink, and set his cup against the table a little harder than necessary, but he nodded and agreed to come.  Jenny liked that at least one person had put up a big fuss. Not that Gabrielle was necessarily throwing a temper tantrum and banging her fists on the floor, but she didn't exactly look pleased about venturing back out in the desert. But ever since Henry had given his assent, she hadn't verbally objected, merely adopting a perpetual expression of worry. 

Jenny, meanwhile, wasn't sure what to feel. She wasn't gung ho like Vail, wasn't concerned like Gabrielle; she was something else entirely. Part of her felt apprehensive, but also excited. For what, she wasn't sure. They weren't doing anything all together exhilarating at the moment. They were, all three of them, following a local on horseback **_(_** Gabrielle had balked at the idea of traipsing out into the desert on their own **_)_** to the site of their crash, no doubt each with different thoughts on the sanity of the plan. Jenny's were a turmoil.

"I feel like I should have said this before, but I don't really like horses." Vail broke the silence, and as Jenny looked over at him she did notice that he was somewhat pale. She had to agree; riding on an animal in the scorching sun was never her idea of a good time. Had it been anything else, she might have waited. But Ahmanet, the idea of seeing the corpse, of reminding herself of everything that had happened...It was too tempting to resist. 

"There's nothing wrong with horses Vail," is all she said in response, keeping a firm eye fixed on their guide, a little ways ahead. "It's not like we could walk all the way there, or take a taxi." Vail scoffed, looking down at his steed ruefully. 

"I'm just saying." He made a vague jerk with his chin. "Horses aren't really my preferred method of transportation."

"You know horses can sense fear, right Vail?" His eyes widened, and so did Gabrielle's minuscule smile. "That's why they always seem more agitated whenever a rider's afraid of them. Your fear makes them afraid as well." This did not seem to make the soldier anymore comfortable with the amount of time he had to spend riding one of the animals across the desert. "It's a never ending cycle." 

"Shit," he muttered. Jenny laughed in spite of herself, a short spurt of it but she laughed nonetheless, mostly out of gratitude that Vail had somehow managed to relieve a bit of the tension permeating their little threesome. "It's not funny!" She refrained from saying anything else, instead choosing to pull herself alongside Gabrielle, who had spent the entirety of their time together so far looking pensive, excluding her brief respite to rib Vail. 

"You're not happy with me." It wasn't a question, and Gabrielle knew it. 

"It's not that I'm no happy with _you_ , per se." That didn't make Jenny feel better at all, and her shoulder stiffened as Gabrielle paused to sigh. "I just don't think coming out here is a good idea. And before you say anything," she cut in as Jenny opened her mouth to protest, "I know you want to, but I just wish I understood why you want to." 

"If I could explain it, I would," Jenny replied honestly. "It's as if...It's as if something's calling to me, compelling me to go and find her. To try and figure out what to do with her." She paused, groping for ways to try and clarify her statement, clarify what she felt about this potential fool's errand. "I know it sounds strange."

"No, actually. It doesn't sound strange." The way Gabrielle said it wasn't reassuring, but cryptic, as if she was thinking of something else entirely, something that Jenny was in the dark on. "I do think it's strange that you're referring to this mummy as if she was still alive." Gabrielle moved ahead, closer to the guide, leaving her companion alone with her thoughts. Logically, she knew Ahmanet wasn't alive. She had studied her coffin, had gone into her tomb. But illogically...Illogically, she saw Ahmanet's face in her mind, her dark eyes and arched cheekbones and full lips, and remembered those brief instances where it felt as if Ahmanet's fingers were touching her skin, sending sparks along her spine. 

"Uh, guys?" Once again, Vail managed to cut through Jenny's thoughts, and bring her back to their present. "Are there normally meant to be holes in the desert?" Confused more than ever, Jenny hurried to catch up to the rest of the group. And Vail was right. There was a giant, gaping hole in the middle of the desert, too dark to see where exactly it ended, sand falling in slowly. The thing that struck Jenny the most, however, was how eerily reminiscent it was of Ahmanet's tomb. She followed Vail and Gabrielle in dismounting, walking over to their guide, making sure to avoid getting too close to whatever this was. 

"We aren't anywhere near the plane crash," Gabrielle said, brows furrowed. "There's nothing that could have caused this, is there?" The guide had clambered off his horse as well, and Jenny quickly translated Gabrielle's question into Arabic. His rapid fire response made her shudder, taking another step back from the hole. 

"What?" Vail hissed, moving closer. "Jenny what? What did he say?" She rubbed the back of her neck, casting another glance at the hole, trying to figure out how deep it went, or if it was even all that deep in the first place.

"He said that he'd heard of tunnels connected to each other all over the area." 

"This doesn't look like a tunnel." Jenny swallowed. 

"He also said that they might have also doubled as mass graves." Gabrielle's head snapped up, and Vail stumbled back, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste to do so. The sun was still beating down on them, yet Jenny felt a brief chill. The same chill she had felt on the plane, in Iraq, in the tavern, and even in the desert after the crash. 

"Mass graves? You're telling me that right below us are a bunch of ancient, rotting mummies who-"

The sand erupted. 

The horses bolted as hands, dusty and desiccating hands, reached up through the sand, dragging rotting bodies up into the sun. They were the bodies of dead men, long dead men, but they were twisting and reaching and pulling and they were real and one of them latched onto Jenny's ankle with the force of a real, very not dead man. She was screaming, and so were Gabrielle and Vail, and they were all swatting madly at the dead men and tripping over each other in an attempt to get away. The guide wasn't, because something had jumped out of the sand and pounced on him. Jenny managed to get a clear view of the scene just in time to see the guide fall, nothing more than an empty husk, as if he had literally been sucked dry.

Standing over him was Ahmanet. Not a fully formed human, with some parts of her looking like an unfinished sketch, and her skin was a horrible gray color with black markings scratched over it, but she wasn't the husk of skin and bones that should have been in the coffin. She wasn't a mummy. She was alive, and here, and Jenny found herself taking a step forward before she caught herself and stopped. Everything was silent. The bodies had gathered around Ahmanet, and Gabrielle and Vail were simply staring, with their mouths hanging open. And Jenny? Jenny couldn't hear anything over the pounding of her own heart. Ahmanet was staring at her with an unfathomable expression, but something about it felt like she was piercing Jenny's soul.

" _What the Hell?_ " Vail likely hadn't meant to say anything in the sudden quiet that had fallen. But it was enough to snap Ahmanet's attention away from Jenny, towards the other two. One word echoed in her mind, clear and angry: _Unnecessary_. In a flash, Ahmanet was nose to nose with Vail, and her minions-because they could only be minions-had converged on Gabrielle. Logically, Jenny knew she should do something. She wanted to do something. But a part of her wanted to stand by and watch, and wait to see what exactly Ahmanet wanted. What Ahmanet wanted with _her_. 

There was a howl of pain, loud enough to snap Jenny out of her trance, and she was able to see Ahmanet stagger away as Vail stared at his hand in shock. Gabrielle had managed to break off a few rotting limbs from her undead assailants, and dragged Jenny over to her, as if movement might shake the blond out of her sudden and inexplicable lethargy.

" _What are you doing?!_ " she hissed, barely heard as Vail managed to shout _I punched a mummy_ into the desert air. Jenny was about to respond, before Ahmanet screamed. It wasn't a normal scream, but a piercing banshee screech that dusted up the sound and made the wind blow. The force of it made Jenny stumbled, Gabrielle's hand fisted in her shirt. Vail tripped on his shoes from the force of the scream, and Jenny caught a brief glimpse of Ahmanet's triumphant look before her feet skidded and found themselves on air. Vail cursed. Gabrielle started to yell. Jenny closed her eyes. She still saw Ahmanet's eyes, an image burned behind her lids. 

They fell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I know whether there are secret desert mass graves or secret tunnels under Egypt? No, I don't, so I'm just gonna have to ask you guys to simply suspend your disbelief and place some faith in your humble storyteller here.


End file.
